Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

I've been working on 2 PKGBUILDs today: maya2014 (just modified mihaim's maya2013's PKGBUILD) and mudbox2014 (based it upon maya2014)Their respective *.tgz (from the official website) contain the following files:

Both maya2014 and mudbox2014 provide them and depend on them.But if you install one of them and then try to install the other one, there would be conflicting filesIf I was to remove the conflicting files in one of them, then the user would be forced to install both.So, I decided to make -adlmapps7-7.0.51-0.x86_64.rpm and -adlmflexnetclient-7.0.51-0.x86_64.rpm into separate packages, so that Maya and Mudbox install them separately as dependencies, and that way one's free to install either Maya or Mudbox, or even both, without having to worry about conflicting libraries.

So, my question is the following:Would I get into trouble with Autodesk if I distributed (submitted to the AUR) parts of its installer?Isn't that what's already being done by having maya2013 in the AUR?I hope I can have an answer soon, from anyone, because I already installed maya2014 and mudbox2014 in my system, working properly, and I want to share the PKGBUILDS

Re: Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

I'm mostly just confused by this post, can you post links/references to the tools, packages, software, etc that you are referring to? Anyhow, I'm really just posting to respond to the following:

NiteiaTt wrote:

Would I get into trouble with Autodesk if I distributed (submitted to the AUR) parts of its installer?

Only autodesk's copyright holder can actually answer that definitively. To get a good idea you'd have to read their license agreement - but without specifying here what the license is - other than that it is a proprietary license - no one here could tell you anything.

Perhaps I've been "spoiled" by open source licensing practices - but, while I have no problem with proprietary license, when a large company's website has page after page on the importance of license compliance and brags about their license compliance department and advertises what they'll do if you violate their license, etc, etc - but they don't actually let you *read* the text of their license ... I'd run far and fast from that. If they want people to comply with rules, they need to be less cryptic about what those rules actually are.

Re: Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

For some reason they provide sample licences at http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/in … d=10235425 but emphasise that some other licence may be the one you are bound by. Why don't they just provide the actual licence on the relevant product page if they are as eager to help you to "ensure compliance" as they say? What's the point of showing you licences which don't apply? Or may not apply? It isn't as if people have never seen a software licence before...

Re: Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

I also found something in the End User License Agreement:

2.1.2 Licensed Materials as a Single Product. The Licensed Materials are licensed to Licensee as a single product and the applicable components may not be separated for Installation or Access (and all such components must be Installed and Accessed on the same Computer except as authorized in writing by Autodesk).

@Trilby Does it include what the definitions of "adapt" or "arrange" are under that context?

Re: Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

And maybe they could include what the definition of definition is tooWell, I guess I was hoping to find a flaw there, but, come on, it's AutodeskAnyway, I don't want to take any risks here.Any idea who I can address in Autodesk to request for permission?

Re: Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

Anything is better than nothing - it's likely any of their reps could at least tell you who you should direct your question to.

I'm not sure if it's likely that they *will* tell you - but they could. Rember 'more flies with honey' and all. If your describe your desire to make it easy to package/install their tools on a well-used linux distro, they may see the promise of getting more registrations/license sales, whatever, and thus be a bit more inclined to help.

But then again, the minimum wage joe who answers the phone at tech service, probably doesn't care one way or the other if the business grows.

Re: Is it safe to dissect proprietary installers?

You're right, I certainly don't want to get into any troubles with them. I'll try and contact them, although I can be almost sure either I'm not going to get an answer, or I won't be able to explain the situation properly and they will deny my requestThanks for the advice, if I hadn't posted this question here I would probably already have submitted the packages.Now, I have another question...Those who maintain maya2013 maya2013sp3 maya2012, etc, in the AUR, wouldn't get into trouble too?I mean, as far as I know, some of them don't install a couple of RPMs, meaning that they separate them from the rest of the installation, AND arrange the installation in a way that differs from the one the official installer has intendedDoes that infringe the EULA too?